Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

We've been having snow on and off since Saturday! Big deal for here, since we're all hills. So Isabel hasn't had school all week, and right now it's still snowing, and doesn't look like it will melt any time soon. Josh is driving back and forth from work with chains on (whoa!) so everything takes longer to do. We're avoiding driving at all. But all the snow makes for some fun play time. Here are some pics of our fun snow sculpting:
We built a fort, which is now even more sturdy thanks to another 3" of snow on top of it

And we built some snowmen (a whole lot bigger and better than Beckett's, lol)


We actually had a different pair of snowmen, but some rowdy teenagers decided to tackle them. Made us really mad, but we just built a new pair instead. I want to see them take these ones down without getting hurt, these ones are now ICE! It warmed up to about 35 degrees and then refroze, so all our creations are here for a while, even after the snow melts.

Merry Christmas Fun

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Here comes Santa Claus :)

I took the kids to see Santa Claus on Saturday and we had the discussion about how the real Santa is so busy getting everything ready for Christmas, so he sends his helpers out to talk to the kids and visit with them. They accepted that explanation easily! I was pleasantly surprised at how easy that was, considering Isabel wondered why there were so many Santas out there. But when we got done with visiting santa, she was convinced that this was NOT a helper, this was the REAL Santa. He had a real beard, and real white hair. So my kids saw the REAL Santa, and all the rest of you got his imitations, lol. Here are the cute pictures we took of them on his lap.





On a whole different topic, here are some funny pictures of when Isabel fell asleep in the car in a really awkward position. She was VERY asleep, never woke up for pictures or when we tried to get her to get up. She has her mouth open, and her teeth resting on the edge of the window ledge, holding the rest of her up.


View from outside the van. This is what everybody on the freeway saw, lol.

Happy Turkey Day and Seattle marathon

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody! We had a very nice day. We went down to Tacoma to have a nice dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Tracy, Grandma and Grandpa T, Don and Jill, and Uncle Bubba. We had a very nice dinner and lots of fun chatting and visiting. We hope everybody else had a great day too.

On Saturday we went into downtown Seattle to the 1st ever 5k in conjunction with the Seattle marathon. The race was right on the waterfront, making for a fun morning. And the weather was nice too! What are the chances of that in Seattle during November?? It was chilly, but not raining, for which we were grateful. Josh ran his race and did very well. He got 26th overall, and 2nd in his division. He was mostly excited for the shirt. Instead of just a t-shirt, like most races, he actually got a really nice running shirt. WooHoo! That made it worth the entrance fee right there!

So here are some pics from the race:

Caught Red Handed!

Yesterday we went to play at Grandma's house, and one of the things we did was make our gingerbread house. We'd never actually done this with the girls yet, so they were really excited and proud of our creation. I think it turned out pretty cute!

So this morning, as I am getting the kids ready to go to church, I see Joshy climbing up to get something... but I wasn't sure what. I figured out what he was getting into. Those little fingers were already pulling candy off the house!

And doesn't he look like he's pretty proud of himself doing it so quietly? This kid is sneaky!

Too bad we can't use the Santa Claus list to coax this one into behaving the way we want, it's working sometimes on the girls, though :)

Josh is old...

and getting older by the minute! We had his birthday party on Sunday because it was also Isabel's primary presentation, so Grandma and Grandpa were already up here.
Isabel's part was, "The prophet is the prophet of God." Can you tell they wrote their own parts? That's total Isabel-eze.

So we all had a nice dinner and jello cake, with Martinelli's, yum! Here are some pictures from that night.






The girls made him their version of "Mopar Action" to go with his subscription.


And here he is with his fancy schmancy running watch.

Pre-Halloween fun

We had a crazy weekend! On Friday was the Jackson Jamboree at Isabel's school. They had a little carnival, dancing, and food. Grandma and Grandpa came up to go with us. The girls had a lot of fun playing the games, while Joshy just enjoyed the little treats they won.

After the games we went down and ate pizza and Ice cream. Isabel was too embarrassed to dance with Grandma, but Joshy and Becca were boogy-in' on down with her. Grandpa even got in on it a little bit.

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early and went to Seward park for the Pumpkin Push 5k that Josh was racing in. He did quite well, we ran all over the park trying to see him at points in the race, but in doing so missed the finish. Oh well, we got some funny pictures in the middle.

How's this for the view from the starting line?

Here he is rounding a bend. Isabel saw him and said, "Mom, Dad's racing a pirate!" Another lady heard her and laughed, "And he's winning!"

He ended up about 30th overall, with some 1300 racers, so he did really well!

And here's where a bird got Becca, lol.

After that, we had a ward Halloween carnival for all the primary kids. They had games, cupcake walk, and all the usual stuff. After that there was trunk or treating. Here are the kids in their costumes.

Joshy wearing Scooby Doo:

Becca as Snow White:

And Isabel as a butterfly:

What NOT to do with BBQ sauce

OK. So don't put a sealed bottle of BBQ sauce in the microwave, everybody! Josh learned this the hard way today :)

He wanted to combine two almost empty bottles into one, and figured he could warm one up and it would pour faster. Fine thinking... nothing wrong with that theory. BUT, he neglected to either loosen or take off the lid. After 20 seconds, I can hear a crazy hissing coming from the microwave (and I was in the Living Room!) He hears it too and quickly yanks the door to the nuker open. The jar has expanded to a crazy size and shape, and it's spitting sauce. He prompty shut it again thinking it was going to explode, and he didn't want to have it blow up on his face.
It stopped spitting, and didn't explode, but might have if he hadn't stopped it's cooking.

But we have a funky new BBQ jar now, lol. It kind of looks like blown glass, all shiny and round. So remember to remove your lids, people!! And just in case you're wondering, it didn't make the sauce run any faster. Take it from Heinz, good things come to those who wait. Squeeze the pickle.

Yum Yum Desitin??

We start to wonder about Joshy's ability to taste! He likes to eat really weird things, like soap, shampoo, and our most recent, desitin.

Just when we think he will think something is really gross, never fails, he'll eat it. But then we are reassured that his tastebuds work, when he turns up his nose at something we WANT him to eat at dinnertime. Silly kid...

Isabel is 6!!!

Isabel turned 6, and she keeps correcting me when I tell people she's five. So she's SIX, everybody....

And for her birthday we gave her the choice of a party with her friends or a party at Grandma's house, and she chose Grandma. (I don't think Grandma minded one bit :) ) Here are a few pics!

Isabel requested a pinata for her party, so we got a princess crown one. All three kids took their whack at it. Even Joshy!

Enjoying the spoils from the pinata :)

There were two little noisemakers on top of Isabel's cake. Becca, clever little thing... figured out that once she ate the icing out of them she could blow them both at once.

Happy Birthday Isabel!

Run Forest, Run!

It's been a busy week around here! On Wednesday, Isabel finally became a Kindergartner. She's been waiting a LONG time, at least if you ask her :) She rides the bus to and from school, and loves it. Rebecca misses her a lot while she's gone, and prays every night that she might get big and be able to ride the bus to school. Soon she'll figure out that it's better to have a little while without Isabel, because then SHE gets to play with Mom and Dad without Isabel's taking over. Here are some fun pictures and movies that we took the first day.

The other big fun even for us this week was Josh's Alumni Run at Redmond High School. It was for the Cross Country team, and apparently it happens every year. Josh hasn't been able to even consider it because of his knee, but since he had surgery on it in October and it has been much better since, he was excited to do it this year. The current team ran along with whatever alumni showed up. Josh was trying to beat some of the JV girls, and actually beat a LOT of JV girls. So we were proud of him, and he was just glad to have finished in one piece. About halfway through the race he ran past us and shouted, "I'm not dead yet!"

Not that Josh, but I liked the picture :)

Josh's cheering section!

He didn't want his mom to come with the milk jugs with pennies in them, so we let the kids show up with them instead! Josh had a jug with pennies, Becca had a soda can with pennies, and Isabel had a football shaped clapper. They could raise quite a noise when they got into it!

Josh's best monkey impression!

No, he didn't win, but did very well, considering he was racing 16 year olds.

After the race, BOTH Josh's were all tuckered out :)












And just for aunt K, here's a little video of Joshy finally talking. So he doesn't say much that's intelliglble, but has gotten VERY good at his non-verbal communication. He points and "ooooo"'s in a variety of tones to express himself. But here he is saying "Grandpa", one of his favorite words. He wouldn't say it facing me, so he's quiet, but it's the best video we've gotten so far.
PS, we don't know why he says everything in such a high girly voice, we hope he grows out of that one :)